Alanz wrote:I've just read The Truth and i thought it was -ing brilliant.

I especially loved the description of the basement scene during the fire; where the melted lead printing press keys were dripping down like rain. It's both beautiful and horrifying (depending on where on is standing!).

I once got chatting to an American woman on a plane after she noticed my Assassins' Guild badge on my bag. She was a journalist and I recommended The Truth to her. I don't know if she ever read it, but she certainly seemed interested.

Interesting... I was just re-reading Thud! and wondering if there was a conscious effort to make it more accessible to new readers. It just seems more explanatory of stuff than other DW books... there was one footnote in particular:

'Yes, The Goddess Anoia* Arisng From The Cutlery,' said Nobby. 'They've got it here. It was painted by a bloke with three i's in his name, which sounds pretty artistic to me.'

* Anoia is the Ankh-Morpork goddess of things that get stuck in drawers

What, no joke? Just literally the information? That seemed so uncharacteristic of Pratchett to me I even wondered if an editor had inserted it, with new readers in mind (my edition is one put out by Waterstone's at a special low price, presumably to encourage people to pick it up where they hadn't read any PTerry before).

And the tone generally in Thud! Feels more explanatoy than other Watch/DW books. Given that Thud! came out around the same time as more stand-alone and/or no-mythology-needed stuff like Going Postal and the The Tiffany Aching books I wondered if around this time PTerry was consciously trying to be more inviting to DW newcomers?

The information is the joke - it's a pun for starters, and let's face it, who couldn't envisage offering up a little prayer when the ladle gets stuck at the top of the drawer again? "For God's sake! Please just open! My dinner's burning!"

What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!

The information is the joke - it's a pun for starters, and let's face it, who couldn't envisage offering up a little prayer when the ladle gets stuck at the top of the drawer again? "For God's sake! Please just open! My dinner's burning!"

Oh hang on - is this the first mention we get of Anoia? I vaguely assumed she'd come up before Thud!. That;s what you get for rereading in random orders.

DreadfulKata wrote:Oh hang on - is this the first mention we get of Anoia? I vaguely assumed she'd come up before Thud!. That;s what you get for rereading in random orders.

Well, that would explain matters.

Yes, Anoia was first mentioned in Going Postal, where she (or her priestess) played a key role in Moist's "religious trance." In Thud! the footnote is needed for those who hadn't yet read Going Postal. The Thud footnote is not one of his better footnotes, but repeated the entire Anoia footnote from GP would have been a little too much.

I really liked the ending of CoM for the same reasons I love the ending of the original version of The Italian Job film. Surely what happens next is left to your imagination, if you want to let rincewind continue falling and ultimately die you can, but if you want something magical to happen, likewise you can! Before I read LF I imagined the luggage swallowing him and swimming up the rimfall or something (I knew he survived because I read the books out of sequence)

If you can fill the unforgiving minute,With sixty seconds worth of distance run,Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,And - which is more - you'll be a man my son.